Rethinking the Welfare State: The prospects for ... - e-Library

Rethinking the selfare state 58
reducing the affordable housing gap for low-income households [in
jurisdictions where tenure subsidies have been a major part of housing
strategy]. 8
Hence, in addition to a sheer quantitative lack of housing assistance, many jurisdictions
are also experiencing what van Weesep and van Kempen call “a growing mismatch” of
housing assistance and the actual needs of the population. 9 The pervasiveness of
homelessness, excessive rent burdens, sub-standard housing and the use of subsidies to
subvent middle-class home ownership has created an urgent need in many economically
developed nations for a politically and fiscally viable affordable housing policy which
targets directly the needs of low-income households.
Affordable housing
Before any housing policy can be examined, however, it is necessary to develop a
working definition of the term “affordable housing.” According to Peter Salsich, the term
is used to describe “decent housing that is within the normal economic reach of families,
accounting for the costs of non-shelter necessities, and utilizing income and family size
as the defining parameters.” 10 Alternatively, government agencies such as the Canadian
Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), define affordable housing as physically
adequate housing that does not consume more than 30 percent of household income. 11
For the purposes of this chapter, “affordable housing” will simply represent a sub-market
of housing consisting of dwellings which are both physically adequate and financially
accessible to low-income individuals. Given this understanding of “affordable housing,”
the term “unaffordability” can be taken to represent two ideas: first, that there exists an
excessive financial burden on those that continue to participate in the housing market
which must be offset by household cutbacks on other necessities; 12 second, and relatedly,
that many low-income households have been priced out of the market for adequate
housing services.
Adequate housing
Adequacy, it should be noted, is a relative property, and one which needs to be assessed
according to different subjective criteria in different jurisdictions. For instance, the “sites
and services” model, where the state builds a network of roads and sewerage and then
allocates spaces for residents to build their own housing from available material as an
alternative to squatting on public lands, is usually considered a dramatic improvement
over the norm in less-developed countries (LDCs), 13 while the same conditions would of
course be regarded as abysmal in the more-developed countries (MDCs) of North
America and Europe.
Given the dramatic per capita income differences between LDCs and MDCs, such
differences in the quality of housing considered adequate are not surprising. It is
surprising, however, to note that adequacy standards vary dramatically even within the
broad category of MDCs. In Japan, for instance, the average dwelling space per person
irrespective of income group in 2001 was approximately 32.8 m 2 , 14 while the Ontario
community rental housing program stipulates a standard size of 41.8 m 2 for a low-income